with their surroundings ; 3 ) raising awareness of environmental sustainability through the materials and inspiration of each project ; and 4 ) supporting civic dialogue through diversity of style , artist , and placement .
The visioning process engendered enthusiastic community support for public art on The Greenway and spurred the first Request for Proposals for a signature artwork in 2013 . That summer , Echelman was chosen out of nearly 100 proposals from across the globe by the Conservancy ’ s Curatorial Committee . Her cityscaled vision , world-renowned reputation , and local connection as a resident of Brookline made her the clear choice to punctuate The Greenway ’ s launch as a significant cultural attraction in Boston . And while her half-acre sculpture of brightly colored twine billowed over the park for only six months , the piece ’ s influence will be anything but temporary .
Though the installation is still fresh in the mind of Bostonians , it ’ s clear that the project will have a lasting impact in two significant ways : changing the conversation locally around the possibilities for public art and offering first-person lessons on executing complex public art projects in Boston .
To the first point , the Conservancy has been flooded with anecdotal evidence that As If It Were Already Here has changed Bostonians ’ perspectives on public art . Each day The Greenway ’ s Fort Point Channel Park hosts hordes of visitors with their heads tilted skyward , cameras and iPhones in hand and smiles on their faces . The sculpture ’ s success has led to exponential growth in The Greenway ’ s press
Boston Society of Landscape Architects Fieldbook coverage , social media interactions and trackable park visits . More importantly , the artist community in Greater Boston now has a solid foundation for continuing to push limits and spread vibrancy across the region . Artists have already conveyed to The Greenway that the project has made it much harder for foundations and regulatory agencies to dismiss innovative proposals due to their scale and complexity . “ If Boston can hang an Echelman ”— the argument goes —“ from three different buildings up to 365 feet in the air , imagine what else we can do !”
An immediate example of the catalytic and multi-industry effect spurred on by the Echelman installation was the Design Biennial Boston Exhibition . This partnership between the Conservancy , pinkcomma gallery , the Boston Society for Architects , the Boston Art Commission , and the Mayor ’ s Office of New Urban Mechanics featured projects by four local , emerging architecture firms on the Greenway park parcels just north and south of As If It Were Already Here . Winners of the competition included Tectonics of Transparency , a seventeen-foot high glass block tower by Cristina Parreño Architecture ; Grove , a conglomeration of resin forms that visitors can peer into by GLD ; Marginal , a field of reimagined wharf pillars by Landing Studio ; and Lo-Fab , a lattice gathering space by MASS Design Group . The intentional clustering of these installations with the aerial sculpture as their backdrop has created a temporary , but prominent , node of innovation in the City . Together these related but unique installations exposed residents and visitors to a variety of public art examples across the disciplines of engineering and design . This has promoted a dialogue around the power of public art to take several forms and to respond to the urban context in the process .
ABOVE Design Biennial Opening on the Greenway
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